Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) or positional vertigo is one of the most common diseases in the United States with a diagnosed population in the millions. It is caused by loose otoliths (ear rocks) falling into the semicircular canals in the inner ear resulting in a disturbed balance. Although not fatal in and of itself, the disease is often extremely debilitating because the dizziness attacks appear to be random, can cause severe nausea, vomiting and unfocused vision, and can interfere with normal daily activities such as driving and eating.
Often, BBPV patients have to lie relatively still in bed for up to several days to minimize the dizziness symptoms. The most common treatments for BBPV are head maneuvering exercises, either carried out at the doctor's office (higher success rate) or self-administered at home (˜20% success rate) when symptoms occur, and in extremely severe cases, surgery that may cause complete hearing loss in the affected ear. A large percentage (10-20%) of the patients may have chronic BPPV and are unresponsive at least some of the times to the head maneuver exercises. Medication can have the effect of masking the symptoms, but not eliminating them. As a result, patients' quality of life can be dramatically worsened not only by the unpredictable dizziness episodes causing extreme discomfort, but also by the high anxiety of an unexpected episodic attack disrupting important business deadlines and meetings, long-planned trips, family celebrations, etc.
Conventional head maneuver exercises for BBPV patients, whether administered by a healthcare professional in the clinic, or self-administrated by the patient at home generally have the following attributes in common:                1) the duration of a session of the exercises lasts from several minutes to about 20 minutes;        2) the exercises are carried out in discrete sessions even if the particular exercise is designed to be repeated periodically;        3) the exercises are carried out when the patient has symptoms of BPPV;        4) the exercises include orienting the patient's head in various positions, including having the head lying flat on a flat surface and having the head tilted back hanging over an edge of a bed; and        5) none of the exercises are prescribed for preventive purpose.        
Elevating the head while a person is resting or sleeping through the night has been recognized to provide potential wellness benefits to the resting or sleeping person. For example, in the art, it is known that keeping the head elevated during a dizziness episode for patients diagnosed with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) and related diseases caused by conditions in the inner ear may help alleviate dizziness symptoms, and doctors sometimes recommend that patients sleep on a stack of pillows for a night or two. However, the actual head position that is beneficial to BPPV patients is not being elevated so much as being tilted with the top of the head at a higher position than the lower portion of the head. Moreover some head maneuvering exercises repeatedly position the patient's head at certain angles from either horizontal or vertical positions for a short duration of under a minute at each position.
Pillows in the art are typically designed for a particular sleeping position: on the side, on the stomach or on the back based on the degrees of firmness of the pillow. A “well-designed” pillow is said to “cradle” the head so as to conform to the natural position of the user while lying on the bed rather than elevating and tilting the top of the head upward. Stacking two or more pillows together may produce a head rest that may induce large strain to the neck, spine and hip regions and cause pain that may be extremely uncomfortable to the user. Even if the configuration of two or more stacked pillows can be made comfortable for a particular period of time, it would be difficult to maintain that configuration during the usual six to eight hours of sleep time. There are also “wedge” pillows which allow the sleeper to be sleeping on his or her back only so that the user cannot position the head in more than one orientation. Moreover people of different physical builds such as broad versus narrow shoulders, long versus short necks and so forth are forced to use the same-sized pillow designed for the general public such that they must go through different pillows with different firmness to find the pillow or the combination of pillows that fit their physical builds.
It is the object of this application to describe methods of mitigating and preventing BPPV symptoms using a head rest that elevates and tilts the head position of the user during a regular night sleep duration of six to ten hours, allows the user to sleep on the back or the side, provides comfort for users of different physical builds. The methods can also allow the user to choose an optimized configuration and lock in the inclination angle of the head-rest and change the angle to a different one when desired, such as when the severity of the BPPV symptoms demands a steeper angle, or when the absence of BPPV symptoms tolerates a smaller angle of incline that is sufficient to keep the otoliths out of the semi-circular canals and yet provides the least amount of bending of the neck. Since having the head inclined at an angle smaller than about 15°, with respect to the horizontal surface is conducive to having the otoliths fall into the semicircular canals, the disclosed methods and devices disallow the inclined angle to be smaller than about 15° with respect to the horizontal. The methods also disallow the head to tilt backward with respect to the spine position. It is also an objective of the present application to disclose a method to prevent and minimizing the symptoms of motion-induced dizziness in an affected person.